The Long Man of Baraboo: An Update

The Long Man of Baraboo is a 1000-year old effigy mound near Baraboo, Wisconsin, in the form of a man with bison horns. (You can find the link to my previous post on the topic--The Long Man of Baraboo--below.)

Ray Bailey—Sparky's husband—and our friend Sirius stopped to pay their respects to the Long Man on their way out west for Sparky's Memorial this Sunday. There's news.

They tell me that the Man is no longer being mowed. They have continued to mow around the Long Man, so that His outline is clear—perhaps even clearer than it was—but the Man Himself is now furry with ferns and prairie grasses. This is entirely fitting. He is now even more the Green Man that He once was.

More: He has His legs back. When Man Mound Road was built in the early 20th century, the Man's feet and lower legs were amputated. For a hundred years, His walking was interrupted.

Well, He walks once more. His lower legs and feet are now marked on the ground by some sort of white durofabric, and on the road by white paint. As shown in the aerial photograph above, we can see once again the Man in His immemorial journey westward. When initially I saw this photo, I assumed that they had been Photoshopped in, but I was wrong: they're really there now. The Horned was ever a Walker.

Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.